Wednesday, March 26, 2008 3:57:15 PM
Just kidding
I saw this at the ApplePeels blog, and thought it an interesting and recent comparison between the experiences on Apple's and MSFT's most current operating systems:
http://viewfromthemountain.typepad.com/applepeels/2008/03/a-mac-users-vie.html
If Vista pushes people onto standards-based tools that support off-migration without requiring it, we may see a slide in business toward platforms which have tried to make standards a priority (Macs, Linux) and which have worked to make the user experience pleasant (well, that might be just Macs).
I'm curious what Apple hopes to achieve with Safari, incidentally. Initially I saw it as a platform for enabling people to test Safari compatibility (and iPhone compatibility) from MSFT's platform, and as an opportunity to battle-test Apple's not-shipped-in-a-long-time Cocoa-for-NT (was apparently a NeXT technology). Was Apple hoping to fund Safari development with Google referral fees? Was Apple hoping to encourage developers to take Safari seriously as a target platform rather than relegate it to some mental niche for a user minority that might be safely ignored? Was Apple trying to build momentum for MSIE share erosion? There's a whole world of possibility. I'm not sure what Apple will achieve intentionally, and what Apple will achieve by accident.
Oh, wait: if iTunes goes Cocoa, Apple will need those Cocoa-for-Win tools to be really solid. Is a Cocoa iTunes in the works later? Will anyone notice or care? I'm thinking that for 64-bit (which on Intel chips has genuine advantages due to the history of the x86 platform), Apple needs to migrate the UI of iTunes to Cocoa, and that code maintenance might be easier down the road with a Cocoa code base, and that maybe Apple has a long-term plan to migrate more and more of iTunes to Cocoa -- and doesn't want to have a very serious MS-Windows fork. Maybe this necessitates a WinCocoa solution to be pretty bulletproof. If QT is going Cocoa, this might also be true: Apple technologies it wants to deploy on MS OSses will require Cocoa be solid, and Safari on Win would be a fairly low-risk way to prove the tech is ready for mass consumption before deploying something that's really important and potentially embarrassing to break.
My current thoughts on Apple are that while iPods might be kinda unexciting (a cash cow now, not a star; though Apple has growth opportunities abroad and especially in markets where Apple hasn't yet bothered to compete, like China and India, which are pretty big and have nontrivial middle classes), Apple's Mac business seems to offer solid growth prospects and the handheld MacOS platform could turn out to be very interesting as it is rolled out this summer (I hesitate to call it the phone business, though this isn't to be discounted, but I expect the camera to be made to behave as a barcode scanner and I imagine all kinds of apps to sprout on the device, which frankly at the iPod Touch's capacity is capable of pretty solid handheld work), and I think phone revenue sharing could be meaningful as Apple grows its addressable market through local vendor relationships in more countries. And Apple as a major app reseller? This might be good revenue. It'll certainly be a big place to see freeware offered by folks advertising their 133+ c0d1ng skillz. I think the transition from freeware app that is a category killer to a paid $2 app for v.2 will probably make some college-age programmers some good money. At $2, who wouldn't buy a nice app? Ohh, I have it. Games with additional level packages for $1 each. Oh, ho, ho! If you want the end of the story ....
Yeah. This will be a big deal for developers, and that will make the platform really attractive -- it'll have the best apps. Whether you want a handheld computer for music and games, or you actually want a phone, the handheld platform is going to hold serious appeal.
Next question: will iTunes allow foreign buyers to use credit cards to get the apps US developers offer? When will non-US developers get a chance to play? Will Apple start drowning in paid registered developers hoping to win the iPod Touch lottery?
This is an interesting time to hold Apple.
Take care,
--Tex.
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